Just One Thing
by moonlighten
Summary: July, 2013: Wales has spent the past week preparing his house for a visit from Scotland and France. He wants everything to be perfect. Romano's unexpected arrival throws all of his careful plans into disarray. (Wales/Romano; background Scotland/France.) Sequel to Here Now. Multi-chapter, in progress. Part 88 of the Feel the Fear series.
1. Chapter 1

The other fics in the Feel the Fear series are listed (and linked) in chronological order on my profile page.  
-

* * *

 **-  
July, 2013; Cardiff, Wales**

-  
Normally, Wales does very little to prepare his house for the arrival of overnight guests.

Normally, though, his only overnight guests are his brothers, who wouldn't notice, never mind care, whether or not the towels in his bathroom complement its colour scheme, or the pillows on their bed have been plumped, or, frankly, any effort at all on Wales' part to make their stay a little more comfortable or pleasant. As long as they're fed at regular intervals, provided with a constant supply of tea and/or alcohol throughout the day, and pointed towards somewhere relatively soft to lay their head down at night, then, as far as they're concerned, Wales has discharged his hosting duties with perfect aplomb.

France probably wouldn't notice either, or, at least, he wouldn't be crass enough to mention otherwise - the continued cluttered disorder of Scotland's house certainly suggests a good deal of forbearance on his part when it comes to proper housekeeping - but Wales is certainly acutely aware that his own accommodations fall far short of those offered by France's own immaculately tidy and well-appointed apartment.

Given Scotland's habit of neglecting to inform him that he and France intend on visiting until they're practically in sight of his house, he's never before been offered the opportunity to remedy his deficiencies on that score. But this time is different; they're attending a concert, and as Scotland had already paid a pretty packet for their tickets, he had absolutely no intention of shelling out for a hotel room, too. He'd had to make actual _plans_ for once, and Wales had been given the unprecedented gift of a week's notice as a consequence.

And he'd made full and efficient use of it. As soon as Scotland had finished informing him that he was coming to stay, Wales sat down and wrote a list of every job that needed doing around his house - large and small - and has been working through it methodically ever since.

He'd bought a bag of France's favourite coffee, a new duvet cover to replace the frilled, floral monstrosity that had been a present from Cerys' mother, and a new set of cutlery that to replace the collection of castoffs England had bequeathed him when he first moved to Cardiff.

He'd spent an hour listening to a wine merchant lecture him on climate, soil acidity, and grape varieties so that he could pick out three bottles of wine that might pass muster with France's exacting taste buds, and another hour in B&Q selecting the perfect shade of blue paint to replace the virulent and slightly luminous green that the previous owner of his house had inexplicably decided to decorate the larger of his two spare bedrooms with.

His towels now match his bathroom's tiles as well as each other.

He's wiped walls, scrubbed skirting boards, polished mirrors, and dusted every square inch of every room. Slowly but surely, he's crossed off each item on his list save the last two: a last minute run around with the vac and washing the inside of the windows.

Hardly onerous tasks, and with over an hour left to spare, he has plenty of time to complete them, so long as he doesn't have to deal with any interruptions.

Which is why he ignores the doorbell the first time it rings, reasoning that it can't possibly herald Scotland and France's arrival - Scotland might push his horrible little car to its very limits, speed-wise, but unless he's finally found a way to break the sound barrier in it, not even he could make the drive down from Edinburgh in less than five hours - and is more likely to be some delivery person wanting him to take in a parcel for one of his neighbours.

But his visitor is persistent. Their second ring is longer, sounding a little plaintive somehow, and Wales is drawn back towards the door despite himself. It could be Janice, needing his help with a blocked drain, or leaking tap, or...

Or nothing. The jobs Janice asks for his assistance on are never as little as she claims, and he can't afford the delay. He manages to stop himself from reaching for the front door's handle, but can't seem to force himself to turn away from it entirely. If the bell rings again, then he'll have to answer it, as that would seem to signify that he was needed for something far more urgent than menial labour.

The bell not only rings for a third time, but a fourth and a fifth: three short, sharp jabs of sound that make Wales' heart hammer hard in sympathetic rhythm.

He wrenches open the door, expecting to find calamity outside. Instead, he sees Romano, which really isn't that much of a relief.

Wales turns his head aside, screws his eyes closed for a moment, and then looks back again. To his surprise, the scene remains unchanged. Romano is still standing there, hands clenched into fists at his sides and a suitcase at his feet. He's scowling and red-faced, which, charitably, could be attributed to the fact that he's too heavily dressed for the heat of the day in a suit, tie, and overcoat. More than likely, though, he's just annoyed that he had to wait for all of a minute or so whilst Wales prevaricated in the hallway.

Whilst the anger is business as usual, his presence on Wales' doorstep most definitely isn't, and Wales is so thoroughly thrown for a loop by it that all of his normal polite, welcoming blather deserts him.

"Um," he ventures uncertainly. "Hello?"

" _Galles_ ," Romano says; brusque, to the point, and entirely unhelpful. No explanation of his sudden unannounced appearance follows, only the slow, appraising once over that typically accompanies their greetings.

Although Wales is dressed in his shabbiest trousers and shirt, fit only for housework, Romano doesn't even blink until his skimmed gaze reaches Wales' head, whereupon he blinks, stares, and then blinks some more. He takes a deep breath, and his lips part slightly as if to speak, but he remains silent.

Wales can't imagine that he's refraining from passing comment out of any consideration for sparing his feelings; presumably, he's at a loss for words.

"I'm in the middle of cleaning the house," Wales says, hurriedly untying the short, messy ponytail he'd corralled most of his hair into. "My hair was getting in my eyes." He slips out the two clips that were holding back his fringe. They're purple and covered with gauzy pink butterflies; he'd bought them for Cerys not long before they split up and she'd left them behind when she moved out. "I wasn't expecting company yet. Well, I wasn't expecting you, at all. Why are you here?"

"I was just passing by," Romano says, completely straight-faced despite that being a lie so blatant as to be completely risible.

He's never visited except at Wales' behest before, and even then only when Wales has been able to provide an iron-clad reason that he should do so, such as Northern Ireland's cooking lessons or family parties where his absence would be noted and then discussed at great, disparaging length.

Besides which, people don't just 'pass by' with luggage in tow, and there's nowhere he could be passing _to_ that would take him down Wales' street, which is miles away from the centre of Cardiff and leads to nothing but more houses, and then, ultimately, his local supermarket.

Still, he's here now, and there's not much Wales can do about it save slam the door closed in his face, which would doubtless prove unconducive when it came moving their relationship forward in the mutually physically beneficial direction it had been edging towards.

"Fine." He sighs. "You'd best come in, then. You'll have to entertain yourself for a while, though. I really am very busy. I wish you'd called to let me know you might be dropping by."

"I did," Romano insists. "And I texted you, too."

"Right." Wales' phone had been making odd chirruping noises earlier, but he hadn't been able to fathom why. It's brand new, purchased just the day before after his ancient cheap and cheerful flip phone finally lost its tenuous grip on life and gave up the ghost. He'd only managed to work out how to switch it on this morning. "I've had the washing machine running all day. Must have missed hearing it."

Romano gives him a dubious look, but opts out of pursuing the matter further in favour of lugging his suitcase across the threshold and into the hall beyond. There situated, he studies the freshly shampooed carpet underfoot, and then the newly hung paintings on the walls, with rapidly narrowing eyes.

"Who _are_ you expecting, then?" he asks with a distinct air of suspicion.

" _Yr Alban_ and _Ffrainc_ ," Wales says. "They're going to a concert in town tomorrow evening, so they're staying a couple of nights."

Wales finds himself ruing the nascent friendship that Romano and Scotland had struck up during last month's G8 summit, because just a few, short weeks ago, that news would doubtless have sent Romano fleeing for the hills in horror. Now, he just nods in placid acceptance, robbing Wales of an easy opportunity to get rid of him without having to resort to actually telling him to go.

And he wants to, quite desperately. He'd been anxious enough, with only two months separating him from their next meeting, but a fortnight hadn't been nearly enough time for him to come to terms with the complete farce he'd made of their one night together, and to shore his defences up in anticipation of there perhaps being another.

He's completely unprepared, and at a total loss as to how he should proceed. Given the way their last meeting ended, he supposes Romano might expect this one to _start_ with a kiss, too. He leans in with the intention of giving Romano a peck on the lips, but Romano ducks his head at the last moment, and the kiss lands just below his ear.

Romano's renewed scowl as he scrubs at his cheek with the heel of his palm leads Wales to believe that he is no better disposed towards kissing him than he'd appeared to be in the hotel's car park in Lock Erne, even though they're lacking an audience this time.

Wales had almost managed to convince himself that that had been the reason for his reluctance then, but clearly he was mistaken. It seems likely that he might want to confine such activities solely to the bedroom, which Wales can live with.

It isn't exactly how he'd prefer things to be, but he _can_ live with it.

"Okay," he says, stepping away from Romano, "like I said, I've got lots of things still to do. You know where the kettle is; make yourself at home. I shouldn't be more than quarter of an hour or so."

Realistically, the remainder of his jobs will take at least twice that, and Wales has every intention of spinning them out for the full hour or more until his reinforcements arrive.

He makes a swift about turn before Romano can make any complaints about being expected to prepare his own coffee, and then beats a hasty retreat upstairs.


	2. Chapter 2

Romano foils Wales' cunning plan less than ten minutes later by not having the good grace to sit his arse down and relax as Wales had asked and thus expected him to do.

He instead stomps up the stairs with his usual elephantine tread, and then loiters in the open bathroom doorway, where - if the prickling sensation that rapidly builds at the base of Wales' skull is anything to go by - he glares at the back of Wales' head with laser-like intensity.

His concentrated silence is very distracting, and Wales can't focus on the task at hand as a result of it. Every time he cleans away one smear from the window, he accidentally creates at least one more with a careless swipe of his fingertips or the side of his hand.

Eventually, he manages to contain the smears to a small patch in the lower left corner of the glass, which is easily hidden by a judicious rearrangement of the bottles set out on the windowsill. It's a shamefully cut corner, admittedly, but as he very much doubts that either Scotland or France will avail themselves of his collection of bubble baths during their brief stay, he's fairly confident it will go unnoticed.

He steps back to admire his handiwork, and then to the left and to the right, to make sure that his shortcomings are successfully concealed from all angles. When he's satisfied on that score, he very reluctantly turns around to face Romano.

He has, it appears, followed one of Wales' suggestions, if not the far more important one of entertaining himself and thus staying out of Wales' hair for the time being.

He's taken off his jacket, coat, and tie, undone the top button of his shirt collar, and rolled his sleeves up to just above the crooks of his elbows. He's also clutching two gently steaming mugs, one of which he holds out for Wales to take.

It's tea of the exact shade of brown Wales likes it best, suggesting that the ideal volume of milk has been added. It's a tricky balance; as little as one drop too many or too few tipping it askew into a mildly disappointing drinking experience. Romano must have a good eye and steady hand.

He's never made tea for Wales either, though, so Wales only takes a small, experimental sip of it at first. It's lukewarm and slightly stewed, but adequately potable all the same.

"Is it okay?" Romano asks, inclining his head towards the mug.

'Okay' is the perfect word for it. Wales nods. "Thanks," he says, and takes another sip as he casts one last, appraising look around the bathroom.

The tiles and mirrors are gleaming; the bath and sink scrubbed to a pure, brilliant white. His bright, fluffy new towels are neatly folded and hung on their rails. Not a thing looks unfinished or out of place, except, perhaps, the toilet roll. Wales' gaze keeps snagging on it, and something about it niggles at him.

"Are you supposed to hang toilet rolls over or under?" he says; mostly just mulling the thought over out loud, and not really expecting an answer.

And for a long while, Romano just stares at him blankly and doesn't give him one, though he does eventually spit out, "What?"

"Toilet paper," Wales repeats. "Over or under?"

"Why the fuck does it matter?" Romano asks; a perfectly reasonable and pertinent question to which Wales' answer would normally be 'It doesn't'.

But now, it seems imperative he makes the correct choice, because he has vague memories of once reading an article that espoused that the wrong one would indicate very unsavoury things about his character.

"Over," he decides after unearthing an equally foggy recollection that the article had ended with the assertion that over-hangers were clearly on the right side of the entire, ludicrous debate.

He quickly scurries off to flip the roll around, and then folds the loose end into the same triangular point that he's seen on display in countless hotel bathrooms over the years.

Romano's expression takes a turn from faint bafflement into incredulity. "Are you doing all this for _Scozia_?" he asks.

Wales snorts. "I doubt he'll notice any of it, and even if he does, he won't give a shit, either way."

" _Francia_ , then," Romano concludes.

"I suppose so," Wales says. "In a way. He always looks after me so well when I visit him, and I guess I wanted to return the favour. But really, I just.. I fancied a change."

It's an idea that's been percolating at the back of Wales' mind all week - even though France was at the forefront all the while - which only becomes fully formed in the same instant he's speaking the words.

Beyond the bare essentials of upkeep to ensure it stayed moderately clean and didn't fall down around his ears in the middle of the night, Wales had done very little around his house in the near-twenty years he's been living in it. Most of the rooms are still decorated with exactly the same wallpaper as they had been when he moved in, he hasn't got around to updating his kitchen despite meaning to do so for at least a decade, and most of his furniture had also been hand-me-downs from England, and had been horribly dated even when he first received it.

Before he started his cleaning and decorating spree, everything had begun to look decidedly shabby, and was so thickly coated with an accretion of useless knick-knacks that he could barely scrape together a square foot of clear, flat surface in the entire house.

Somehow, he hadn't even noticed how many he'd accumulated until he set out to dust them en masse instead of pecking away at the job over the course of a week or two as he usually did.

It had seemed insurmountable until he made the decision to be ruthless and start packing some of them away to join the rest of his store of memories in the attic. Gone was his sizeable collection of tourist-trap love spoons, winnowed down to only a small handful of the best examples of the art. Gone too were the worst of his own attempts at watercolours that had once decorated his hallway and lounge, leaving behind just the one he is least ashamed by.

He'd filled three boxes with books he felt sure he'd never want to read again, given that they were so badly written that he hadn't been able to force himself to finish them in the first place, and donated them to charity, along with all the superfluous kitchen utensils and crockery he never used.

Northern Ireland's recent visit had served him with a fresh reminder that the teapot Cerys had made for him was dangerously unfit for purpose, and he'd packed that away too. He'd ended up removing from display most of the little odds and ends and cheap trinkets that had once belonged to his past lovers, because he realised that being surrounded by such reminders of them day after day was making it harder to move on forward in the direction he knows he must.

His relationships with humans may all have ended unhappily, but they'd felt so much easier, they'd flowed so much more naturally, than the one he's trying to eke out with Romano. But he'd promised himself he wouldn't go back, and whatever the hell it is that's happening between him and Romano is the only prospect on his romantic horizon right now, so he's just going to have to find a way to make the best of it.

And if that means ridding himself of anything that might serve as a temptation to backslide into old habits, then that's how it will have to be.

"What have you got left to do?" Romano asks, startling Wales into the realisation that he'd been standing in front of the toilet roll holder and staring at it absently for far too long.

"Um, the rest of the windows downstairs, and the vaccing," he says. "Oh, and I should probably have a shower, too."

Romano's nose wrinkles slightly. "You _definitely_ should."

Great. So Wales had not only been sporting ridiculous hair and clothes that should have been consigned to the rubbish bin long ago when he greeted Romano earlier, but apparently he'd stunk, as well. It was no wonder that Romano hadn't wanted to kiss him.

"Fine," he says with a sigh, "I'll find the time to squeeze one in, then." Consulting his watch, he's shocked to discover that his overly nitpicky cleaning of the window and vacuous contemplation of the toilet roll had eaten up a surprisingly hefty chunk of his remaining hour. "I'm not sure how, though."

"I'll clean the windows for you," Romano offers.

"You don't have to do that," Wales says, horrified at the suggestion, which he considers a fairly damning indictment of his skills as a host. "You're a guest, too. Sit down, have another cup of coffee. I'll manage."

Romano frowns, and then strides forward, bursting straight through Wales' personal bubble and coming to a halt uncomfortably close in front of him once more. And as had been the case on the other two occasions he'd acted in the same way, the rough set of his jaw and determined cast of his eyes leads Wales to believe that he could well be thinking about punching him.

This time, he does actually go through with raising one of his hands, but he holds it flat-palmed and lax, hanging suspended in the air beside Wales' head. "I'll clean the windows," he says again, and after a momentary hesistation, his hand descends and he takes a loose grip of Wales' shoulder. "Go on" - he gives Wales a gentle push in the direction of the door - "you _really_ need that shower."

When Wales opens his mouth with the intention of mounting another objection to his proposal, Romano shoves him a little harder, and repeats, "Go on," in a sharp, abrupt tone which betrays that his patience is thinning.

Despite everything, they've managed to avoid ever coming to blows thus far, and Wales doesn't want to risk ruining the precarious harmony they've somehow maintained with a petty argument now. He doesn't have time for it, for a start.

Grudgingly, he gives in to Romano's urging, and trudges off to fetch his vac.


	3. Chapter 3

When Wales answers the front door to Scotland's knock, he invites him inside with an expansive welcoming gesture, his widely swept arm meant as a subtle encouragement for his brother to stop, look around himself, and perhaps even appreciate the positive changes that a week's hard graft has wrought to the hallway.

Scotland completely ignores the hint and doesn't even reply to Wales' greeting beyond a soft grunt of acknowledgement. Instead, he kicks off his boots by the door – hard enough that it dislodges clumps of dried mud from their soles, which scatter across a broad swathe of the hitherto pristine carpet – dumps all of the many bags and boxes he's carrying on the floor, and then informs Wales that: "I'm fucking parched; I'm going to put the kettle on. Do you fancy a cup?"

Wales hadn't expected any other outcome, but he's a little saddened by it all the same. Ridiculously so, given that he's spent the past two decades plus change exhorting his brothers to treat his home as their own, and Scotland likely wouldn't notice if someone broke into his own house in the middle of the night and redecorated it top to bottom whilst he slept. Noticing Wales' decluttering efforts and some touched-up paintwork was always going to be beyond him.

Wales sighs, lets go of his disappointment, and plasters on a polite smile. "I'd love one, thanks."

He trails Scotland into the kitchen, and then almost collides with his brother's broad back when he stops short just beyond the doorway and stares at Romano, who is sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and frowning over a newspaper.

Scotland turns his own frown on Wales. "You didn't tell us you were going to have company." He inclines his head towards the table. "Romano."

Romano matches his nod. " _Scozia_."

"Scotland," Scotland corrects without hesitation, and so casually that he sounds almost nonchalant, despite it having been less than two months since he'd last called Romano a 'pestilent blight' that should be purged from Wales' life at the earliest opportunity.

Romano mouths the name silently to himself rather than risk repeating it aloud, clearly distrustful of this fresh overture of apparent friendship on Scotland's part.

Wales, however, is astonished by it, as he cannot conceive of it being anything other than genuine. Scotland just doesn't have it in him to be duplicitous in that way: if he's pissed off at someone, he threatens to punch them; if he likes them, he offers them drinks, he asks them to call him by his true name if they're nations, and, if he's sufficiently pie-eyed, hugs them hard enough to crack a rib.

Since he's stone-cold sober, a hug is out of the question, but he does scoop up Romano's empty mug from the table as he passes by en route to the kettle. "I suppose you'll be wanting coffee," he says, bustling off without waiting for a reply.

Not that Romano seems inclined or even capable of giving one. He looks dumbfounded, and gapes wordlessly at Scotland for a stunned moment before raising a questioning eyebrow in Wales' direction, but he can only shrug in response to it.

Whilst Scotland had obviously begun warming up to Romano during the conference in Lough Erne, this complete thaw is still shockingly unexpected, given how deeply and loudly he'd despised him – and his position in Wales' life – for the three years prior to it. Wales can only suppose that France must have had Words with Scotland at some point recently, as France's interference is at the root of any odd or uncharacteristic behaviour on Scotland's part more often than not.

On the tails of that thought comes the realisation that France is overdue to join them, and Wales asks Scotland, "Where's _Ffrainc_? You didn't forget to bring him, did you?"

His brother laughs. "Naw, but he'll be a while yet, I imagine. Janice accosted him as soon as he got out of the car."

Despite being somewhat enamoured with Romano of late, France will always be Janice's great love, her firm favourite amongst Wales' friends and family. She never passes up an opportunity to spend time with him, showing off her latest knitting projects and sharing the fruits of her baking, and will probably keep him captive, and captivated, for _hours_.

So, Scotland makes only one cup of coffee and brings it along with two cups of tea to join Romano at the table, whereupon he launches, unprompted, into a blow by blow recount of the route he had driven down from Edinburgh, one replete with complaints about delays, traffic jams, and bad drivers, who number – by Scotland's reckoning, at least – every single person on the road beside himself.

Such monologues of woe typically fill the first half-hour of any visit from him, and over the years, Wales has learnt that the best way to get through them is to bolt a blandly attentive expression onto his face and stay silent, as even the very mildest display of sympathy will encourage his brother to expound on his misery in excruciating detail.

Romano, however, has never been subjected to this particular trial of patience before, and when Scotland finally, blissfully begins winding up his dreary tale, he – out of naivety, or perhaps the desire to stay on the good side he's unexpectedly found himself on – asks a question about the diversion Scotland had mentioned having to take, and then leans forward in his seat, sharp-eyed and focussed, as though he is honestly interested in Scotland's answer.

Wales, now despairing of hearing a word of sense out of either of them for the at least the _next_ half too, makes an exaggerated display of checking his watch, gets up from his seat, and then announces, "I should probably get started on dinner. I'm going to make lasagne."

Romano looks predictably dolorous about that piece of news, and Scotland just as predictably gratified, albeit only for a moment before his face falls again. "France's planning on cooking for us tonight," he says. "It's his host gift to you, apparently."

"Oh," Wales says, and it's strange, unprecedented, to not relish the prospect of a meal cooked by France, but as this one has robbed him of his one, decent excuse to absent himself from what passes for his brother's conversation, he finds himself resenting it. "Well, that's very kind of him."

He has no choice, then, to sit down, shut up, and listen to Scotland tell a suspiciously – and, to Wales' eye, unconvincingly - fascinated-looking Romano about the complex tangled route of A roads he had ultimately decided upon in order to avoid roadworks.  
-

* * *

-  
France eventually reappears almost two hours later, bearing a large cake box, an even larger smile, and the faint scent of Janice's homemade damson gin. He looks very pleased with himself and the world in general, and when Wales gets up to greet him, he presses warm, lingering kisses to his cheeks and then embraces him closely.

As is his habit on such occasions, his hands slowly wander their way down from Wales' shoulders to settle on his arse, whereupon he gives his customary squeeze and a murmured compliment that Wales doesn't believe a word of, but which raises a blush to his cheeks all the same.

It's testament, Wales believes, to how secure Scotland feels in their relationship nowadays that his only reaction to witnessing this performance, is a muttered, "Jesus Christ". Just a few, short years ago, he would have been threatening to garotte Wales with his own entrails before France's hands had even reached the small of Wales' back, brother or no.

Romano, on the other hand, glowers at them balefully when they break apart, though it's unclear whether his ire is directed towards France or Wales. He hasn't the right to it either way, to Wales' mind, as he'd had ample opportunity to share a kiss with Wales earlier – and, indeed, squeeze his arse too if the fancy took him – if he wasn't so squeamish as to be put off by a touch of sweat.

His greeting to France is decidedly chilly, in sharp contrast to France's own to him, which is cheerful, shading towards delighted, before his expression takes a sudden turn towards pensive. "We're not intruding on anything, are we?" he asks Wales.

"No," Wales reassures him. "He was just passing by."

France looks just as baffled by that weak justification as Wales had been, but a single glance at Romano's sullen expression seems to dissuade him from pressing for a more rational explanation.

He leaves it aside in favour of the more pressing matter of dinner, which he assures them will not be long delayed despite his unanticipated sojourn at Janice's house, just so long as Romano agrees to lend a helping hand with the preparations; a stipulation which Romano agrees to readily enough despite the sour turn of his mood.

Scotland and Wales' hands are, apparently, superfluous to requirements and they're both unceremoniously turfed out of the kitchen in short order to keep Scotland from 'getting underfoot', according to France.

Wales is still ruminating on that decision an hour and two cans of cider later. "I can understand him not wanting you to help out," he says to Scotland. "You can't even heat baked beans in the microwave without finding a way to fuck it up, but I _like_ cooking! I'm sure I could stir and chop things just as well as Romano does."

"I don't know; France is really particular about his cooking," Scotland says. "Woe fucking betide you if your carrots julienne are even a millimetre wider than they should be. Renders them inedible, apparently." He smiles fondly. "He's a hard taskmaster in the kitchen and you're best off out of it, believe me."

"But—"

"Look, the food's going to be delicious, you don't have to cook yourself, and you know France always tidies up as he goes, so your kitchen's probably going to be even cleaner than it was when he started out. It's a win-win situation, Wales. Just relax and enjoy."

Dinner is indeed delicious, as is the wine has selected to accompany it, which Wales drinks far too much of as a consequence. By the time he's cleared the table and piled all their dirty plates beside the sink to be forgotten about until morning, he's a little unsteady on his feet, and fuzzy-headed and lethargic enough that he's tempted to turn in for the night even though it's only just gone eight o'clock.

If he were on his own, he would do so anyway – with a nice soothing cup of Horlicks to boot – but he has guests to think of, and Scotland and France seem keen that he join them in watching a film that they both recommend, so Wales tells them it sounds like a wonderful idea, he couldn't think of any better, and resigns himself to an uncomfortable, wasted evening of nodding off intermittently and thus failing to follow whatever passes for the film's plot.

Scotland and France commandeer the largest of the two sofas in Wales' living room, and France sprawls out along the length of it – his head propped up on one armrest, his feet pillowed in Scotland's lap – leaving Wales with no option but to share the smaller one with Romano.

Throughout the film's first two scenes, Romano sits stiff-backed, his body angled awkwardly away from Wales', but in the middle of the third, his hand descends upon Wales' knee, just as it had when they were visiting Janice. And, just as they had been then, his fingers are rigidly clawed, digging painfully deep into his flesh. It's off-putting and uncomfortable, and Wales is on the verge of batting his arm aside when he notices France is watching them. His eyes are soft, his faint smile pleased, and Wales cannot bring himself to disappoint him in any way.

He endures, and by slow degrees, Romano's death-like grip loosens. By the time the film moves into its final act, his thumb starts stroking abstract little distracted patterns against Wales' inner thigh. Wales looks at him sharply, but he seems thoroughly absorbed in the film and likely unaware of what he's doing.

It's uncomfortable in an entirely different way, and when the film ends and France and Scotland announce that they're ready for bed, Wales springs instantly to his feet, relieved to be finally freed from his enforced proximity to Romano and his disconcerting touch.

His happiness is fleeting though, lasting only for the heady moment until he remembers that his brother and France's presence means that there will be no consigning Romano to the spare bedroom for the night.

No matter that Wales is still woefully unprepared for it, both mentally and emotionally, they will have to share a room and, more than likely, a bed for the night.


	4. Chapter 4

It's a sad indictment of the state of Wales' relationship with Romano that one of the biggest changes it has made to his life is that he spends a far higher proportion of it hiding in bathrooms than ever before.

Hiding in his own represents the absolute nadir of this miserable trend, but as it is the only room in his house with a lockable door, it had been his only viable option.

He wasted as much time as he possibly could in performing his normal bedtime ablutions, stretching them out into absurdity, but nonetheless ran out of things to wash or scrub or brush far too quickly. For the past god-knows-how-long, he has been sitting perched on the edge of his bathtub, staring at his tastefully coloured towels and listening to the sounds of his house settling in for the night around him.

To his left is the guest room, where Scotland and France are mercifully being pretty subdued about whatever it is that they're doing which involves a great deal of soft murmuring and muffled laughter. To the right is his own, from which had emerged a prolonged series of thumps and bangs earlier. They'd stopped a while ago now, though, perhaps signifying that Romano has since gone to sleep.

Wales cannot decide whether he is happy about that or not. For the six months or so preceding the meeting at Lough Erne, he had convinced himself that fucking Romano would solve everything: pacify his long-neglected libido; wring something enjoyable out of the miserable farce that passes for their relationship; maybe even draw them a little closer together so that the time that they are forced to spend together by necessity became even a touch less arduous.

But it hadn't been very enjoyable, Wales had just embarrassed himself, and Romano certainly doesn't seem to like him any the better for it; seems to hold him in the same quiet contempt that he had done beforehand.

He'd been so certain after Lough Erne that all he wanted, all he _needed_ , was a second chance to prove himself, and then the immensely satisfying sex life he'd imagined for the two of them was bound to follow. That certainty had eroded over the past couple of weeks, and now the faint ember of arousal Romano had managed to stoke within him during the film has faded into nothing, even more of it has crumbled away.

The reality of him is just too immediate, and Wales definitely needs more time to prepare otherwise he'll just humiliate himself all over again. He doesn't imagine that it's something he will be forgiven for a second time, no matter how understanding Romano had appeared to be about the first.

It's probably better that Romano's fallen asleep. Wales waits a little longer to make sure that he has, and then, emboldened by the continued silence, carefully sneaks out of the bathroom, along the corridor beyond, and eases open the door to his bedroom.

Romano is perched on the end of his bed, clad in a white undershirt and boxers, looking down at his hands, which are resting in a loose clasp against his lap. When Wales takes an involuntary, shocked step backwards, his head snaps up, and his eyes meet Wales' levelly. His nostrils flare once on a sharp inhalation, but the scowl Wales anticipates is not forthcoming.

"You were a long time," he says, and the exact tone of his voice is impossible for Wales to decipher. There's a note of disapproval there, another of accusation, but there's something else, too, one that isn't nearly as easy to put a name to.

"Yes," Wales says, and then he falters, because he can hardly admit he's been _hiding_ but, put on the spot, he can't think of any sort of plausible excuse for his delay. He clearly should have spent his time cowering in the bathroom to better effect and spared a moment to concoct one rather than assuming that he'd procrastinated long enough that it wouldn't be necessary.

Thankfully, though, Romano doesn't press him for more details. Instead, he just stares at him for a beat longer, and then launches himself up from the bed in a sudden, jolting lurch, grabs hold of Wales' shoulders, and presses their lips together, just as he had in the pub almost three years ago at the start of this whole sorry mess.

Wales wouldn't exactly call _this_ a kiss, either. There's absolutely nothing tender about it, only a clash of teeth, pressure, and the faint taste of blood on Wales' tongue. Romano's hands are just as hard and insistent, grabbing tight hold of his hips, and Wales is so surprised and overwhelmed by it all that he doesn't have chance to worry or second guess himself when Romano pulls him towards the bed where…

… He embarrasses himself all over again. Maybe even worse than at Lough Erne, because then he'd been able to scrape up a tiny morsel of restraint, just enough to hold himself together for long enough to get a few of the buttons on his pyjamas undone, at least.

He hadn't even managed that much this time.

"I'm sorry," he tells Romano. "Again."

"It's fine, _Galles_ ," Romano says, and his voice is warm again, too. Unusually so, as, apparently, the only time he can summon up something approaching kindness in Wales' presence is when he's trying to reassure him that he's anything other than an enormous disappointment in bed. " _You_ were fine."

Which is hardly a ringing endorsement. "I don't know why this is happening to me," Wales says.

Except he does, because he used to be the same way as a youth, whenever he was with a new partner and his nerves got the better of him. He thought he'd overcome it centuries ago, but it seems depressingly typical of his romantic luck of late that he'd start experiencing it again here, now, and with probably the worst possible person.

"It's fine," Romano reiterates, reaching across the mattress to give Wales' hand a quick squeeze.

Wales doesn't want to look at him, as he strongly suspects that the expression that accompanies that squeeze will be a pitying one, so he hurriedly pushes the duvet aside and gets out of the bed.

"Okay," Romano says, and the quiet indrawing of his breath suggests that he's about to add more, but Wales dashes out of the room before he gives voice to it, retreating once more to the safe confines of his bathroom.

There, he splashes his face with water, strips off his pyjamas and shoves them in the laundry basket, wipes himself down, and then realises he has made a serious misstep. He has nothing to change into, and there's no way on god's earth that he's going to return to his bedroom naked. A frantic search of his airing cupboard and the chest of drawers in the spare room unearths a threadbare pair of pyjama bottoms he thought he'd chucked out long since, but, unfortunately, no corresponding top. The trousers alone are better than nothing, though, so he slips them on and trudges slowly and unenthusiastically back to his room, damp flannel in hand.

Romano is already asleep when he returns, his face peaceful and untroubled in a way that makes it very tempting to 'accidentally' kick him a little as Wales settles himself back into the bed with him. He squelches the urge firmly, because it's petty, beneath him, and thoroughly unconducive to his interests, besides.

Wales' own sleep is slow to come. Even as his embarrassment cools and begins to dissipate, anxiety bubbles up to take its place.

Because despite all the other shortcomings he might, and does, possess, he'd always been unshakeably convinced that he was good at _this_. He'd been proud that he'd somehow escaped falling prey to the buttoned-up repression that plagued his brothers, and proud too that he'd always managed to satisfy his partners before. He might not be the best, or the most adventurous, or, as he'd told Romano, the most flexible lover, but it had never been an issue for him in the past.

Now, he can't help but wonder why the deficiencies he'd thought long-conquered are rearing their ugly heads again, and he worries about the implications of that until his eyelids finally grow heavy and begin to sag.

It feels as though he's only closed them for a moment when he's roused by a loud banging on the bedroom door, and Scotland shouting out, "Are you decent?"

Wales glances over to the other side of the bed to check if any part of Romano that might scandalise Scotland is on display, but it is empty. He sighs, sits up against the headboard, pulls the duvet up under his armpits, and then calls back, "Come in!"

Scotland enters the room slowly and hesitantly, regardless, and fixes the thin sliver of Wales' bare shoulders still on display with a look of horrified disgust.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Wales snaps. "You do realise I'm naked under my clothes every single time you see me, don't you?"

Scotland visibly recoils. "Well, I can't say the thought had ever crossed my mind before you mentioned it," he says, scowling. "So, thanks for that, Wales." He inclines his head towards the plate he's carrying. "I'm not sure you deserve this, now."

"What is it?"

"It," he passes the plate to Wales with a ridiculous swooping flourish of his arm, "is a bacon sandwich. Call it my host gift. I did just make it out of the goodness of my heart, but—"

"Then I reminded you I have genitals. So sorry; won't happen again."

"You see that it doesn't," Scotland says with a grin, and then sits down heavily on the edge of the bed. The frame creaks in distress under his weight. "Are you going to try it, then?"

Wales eyes the sandwich carefully. Scotland's bacon sandwiches can often be painful experiences, given his propensity to overcook the bacon until it becomes so brittle that it shatters into razor-sharp shards when bitten. The small end pieces of the meat that are sticking out from the bread are reassuringly pink, though, so Wales risks a cautious mouthful. It's still chewy, which is a minor miracle, but soon proves to be excessively so. By the time Wales has finished the sandwich, his jaws are aching.

Nevertheless, it is still: "One of your better efforts, _brawd_."

"I thought so," Scotland says, beaming happily. "I'm quite proud of how they turned out. I even offered one to Romano before he left for his meeting at the consulate, but he wasn't having it."

"Oh," Wales says blandly. Romano had never mentioned having to attend any meetings to him, and though his reticence is, as it always is, disheartening, he can at least take some comfort from the fact that he had good reason to rise early without waking him, and likely didn't flee the bed in a fit of justified horror at some point during the night, as had been Wales' first, instinctive assumption. "It's probably for the best, anyway. I think you have to have a certain sort of constitution to survive your sandwiches without incident, _Yr Alban_."

"Aye, one hardened by years of England's cooking." Scotland chuckles. "Anyway, he said to tell you that he probably wouldn't be back before seven, so you'll get him to yourself for the night. France and I need to be at the theatre by then."

"And what do you plan to do with yourselves for the rest of the day," Wales asks, to distract himself from the frankly quite terrifying prospect of 'getting Romano to himself' for _any_ length of time.

"Whenever His Highness deigns to get up, we're going to go into town: do a bit of shopping, get some lunch. Do you fancy coming with?"

Wales shakes his head. Although France and Scotland obviously try their best not to do so, they do have a tendency towards getting wrapped up in each other to the exclusion of all else – even now, when their honeymoon period is surely long overdue to have ended – and Wales is in no mood to play third wheel today.

He'd have too much time to dwell, obsess, and worry about what seven o'clock might bring, then. For the sake of his nerves, it will be far better for him to busy himself so thoroughly that he doesn't have time to think at all.


	5. Chapter 5

Unfortunately, Wales' extensive preparations in anticipation of France's visit have robbed him of his best prospects of occupying himself for any length of time.

Beyond vaccing up the mud Scotland had tramped across the hall and washing last night's dishes, there isn't anything that needs doing in the house, and his garden, which is usually engaged at this time of year in a spirited attempt at returning to a wild, untamed state somewhat reminiscent of a jungle, requires no more than a quick spot of weeding to return it to perfect order.

In desperation, he calls all three of his bosses, but none of them can scrounge up a single scrap of either paperwork or busywork they might need him to complete, presumably due to his short-sighted industry of the previous two weeks.

He spends the next two hours alternating between staring at a blank sheet of paper and the blank wall behind his desk, failing to write a poem, until the sound of his doorbell chiming offers a welcome reprieve from frustrating tedium of the exercise.

His visitor is Janice, come to drop off another freshly baked cake and a bottle of her damson gin. "For Francis," she tells him as she presses the bottle into his hand, though she does magnanimously allow him to pour himself a little to sample.

Just a thimbleful at first, barely enough to wet his mouth, but when he praises it anyway, she urges him to fill a glass and one for her, too. It's sharp, flavourful, and ruinously strong, and when they reach the bottom of those glasses, Janice decides that they've drunk enough of it that the bottle is hardly a fitting gift for France anymore, so they might as well finish it themselves.

"I'll bring another bottle round for him later," she says, topping up Wales' glass with a generous measure. "I'd hate for him to go home without one. He said it was the best he'd ever tasted!"

Wales suspects that it could well also be the _only_ homemade damson gin France has ever tasted, given his longstanding aversion to spirits, adulterated or otherwise, but the compliment must have been very convincingly delivered, nonetheless, as Janice is sent into raptures by the memory of it.

She pronounces him 'charming', 'delightful', and a long list of superlatives besides, before capping them off with an airy sigh and: "Your brother's a very lucky man."

Which is a subject Wales doesn't care to dwell upon even at the best of times, much less when he has yet another disastrous night with Romano behind him and a bellyful of alcohol inside. He nods curtly.

"And so are you!" Janice says, clearly ascribing the morose downturn of his expression to a completely different strain of envy. "Your young man's lovely, too, and he's obviously head over heels for you!"

Wales almost chokes on his gin. "What?" he splutters. "I don't think—"

"He is," Janice insists, folding a hand around his and squeezing it gently. "When you get to my age, you can just tell these things."

Wales is more than thirty times her age, and he has no idea what she's talking about; what she might have seen. He ruminates upon it long after she's left, replaying every interaction Janice has ever had with Romano through his mind, trying to find an angle which could transform Romano's glares and his scowls and his brusqueness into something that even resembles tolerance for Wales' company, never mind love.

It's impossible, but then again Wales mind has always worked better with words than images. So, he sits back down at his desk and writes his first poem dedicated to Romano.

Or, at least, he attempts to do so, but there doesn't appear to be a combination of letters in either the English language or his own that exists which can help him make any sense out of it all.

He works on through France and Scotland's brief, noisy return to the house, through their equally noisy departure to the theatre, all the way on to the dreaded hour of seven o'clock, whereupon the increasingly rowdy complaints of his empty stomach force him to take a break and eat.

He heats up the sparse leftovers from yesterday's dinner, and mindlessly shovels them down at the kitchen table whilst scribbling notes on the back of an envelope. When he fills that up, he starts on the front, writing straight across the thin plastic window that had displayed his address even though it seems to actively repel the pen's ink, and thereafter the inside of a cereal box he fishes out of the recycling bin at the end of the counter.

He writes on through half-seven, then eight, and it's approaching nine o'clock when he hears Romano letting himself in the front door with the spare key Scotland must have lent him that morning. His footsteps shuffle down the hallway, pausing just outside the kitchen door. He inhales deeply before entering the room.

He looks exhausted, his suit and shirt both crumpled, and his normally bright skin ashen. His eyes look glassy when they briefly flicker towards Wales before his gaze settles on the cardboard spread out on the table. One of his eyebrows rises an infinitesimal degree.

"What are you writing?" he asks, in a dull, leaden, thoroughly disinterested tone.

"A poem," Wales says, and a small, masochistic part of him wants Romano to ask what it's about, but, of course, he doesn't.

He just nods, and then practically collapses onto the chair beside Wales' as though his legs have suddenly given out beneath him.

Wales watches him out of the corner of his eye, hoping to catch him in an unguarded moment of seeming in any way pleased to be back here, to see Wales again, but he only stares vacuously down at the top of the table as the silence between them lengthens, deepens, and grows so uncomfortably weighty that Wales eventually has to flee from it.

"Would you like a drink?" he asks, already halfway up from his seat.

Romano nods again.

"There's cake, too," Wales says. "Janice dropped some more off earlier."

Romano raises both of his eyebrows this time. "What kind?"

"Chocolate and beetroot." When Romano wrinkles his nose at that, Wales is quick to add, in defence of Janice's culinary honour, that: "It's nicer than it sounds. Very moist."

Romano still looks unconvinced, so Wales cuts him only a tiny sliver of cake to accompany his coffee. He seems neither pleased nor displeased by it, chewing on it stolidly and expressionlessly in between giving monosyllabic answers to the questions that Wales doggedly persists in asking about his day at the consulate in yet another of his sad, pathetic attempts at a normal conversation with him.

He runs out of both stamina and ideas by time they've finished their drinks, and can only think of suggesting that they watch a film afterwards, to give them a good excuse for not having to talk to each other for a couple of hours.

"I'd rather just go to bed," Romano says, shaking his head.

Wales' stomach pits cold. "Okay," he says shakily. "You… you go on up. I'll be up in a minute."

Or an hour, if he can swing it. If Romano is as tired as he looks, he'll be asleep long before then.

But even though he procrastinates in the kitchen for as long as he can bear, and then in the bathroom, just as he had last night, Romano is, yet again, awake when he creeps trepidatiously into his bedroom, still wearing an undershirt and boxers and seated at the end of the bed, just as _he_ had been last night. It almost feels as though they're stuck in some sort of time loop; as though the entire day hasn't happened, and Wales is doomed to repeat the same horrible, humiliating moment over and over again.

This time, however, Wales kisses him first, mostly just to get it over with.

And that feels just the same, too. The same stumbling fall on to the bed, Wales' heart pounding out the same, frenzied rhythm, the same, all-consuming heat building until—

Romano turns his head aside, breaking the kiss, and splays one hand out across Wales' chest, pushing him back.

Wales scrambles off and away from him, to kneel by his side on the mattress. "Are you okay?" he asks, anxiously searching Romano's face for any sign of discomfort or distress.

There's warmth in the soft curve of his lips, though, and wound around and through his words when he says: "Do you think we could take off our clothes this time?"

"Right," Wales says. "Of course." The question shouldn't surprise him, because it's a perfectly normal thing to want in bed – not to mention a perfectly normal part of Wales' usual repertoire there – but it does all the same, and he hesitates for a moment before reaching for the first button on his pyjama top. "I'll just…"

He manages to get to the third before his nerves give out and he can't go on any further, because Wales' has never got over his youthful self-consciousness about his body, not really, he's just learnt to pretend it doesn't exist, ignore his shyness, which is impossible to do when Romano is watching him so keenly, eyes transfixed on Wales' hands.

Wales sighs and leans over to turn off the bedside lamp.

Romano grabs his wrist, holds him still. "Don't," he says firmly.

Wales blinks down at him in confusion. "Why?"

Romano's face flushes, his lips purse, and for a long while it seems as though he won't answer, but eventually he spits out, harried and rough, "Why do you think?"

Honestly, Wales can't think of any reason – none that isn't ludicrous, anyhow – until Romano gives him a long, slow, deliberate once-over that seems, unbelievably, as though it's meant to be an answer in and of itself.

"Fucking hell." He snorts out a laugh; can't help himself. "Really?"

"Yes, really," Romano says, his eyebrows bristling in a frown.

"Jesus," Wales breathes shakily. "But I'm…"

Nothing at all like Spain. Nothing at all like the sort of man he would have expected someone like Romano to be interested in. He can't quite bring himself to put that into words, though, and just gestures towards himself vaguely, the wide arc of his hand meant to encompass him in his entirety.

Romano's eyes narrow. "I never would have kissed you in the first place if I was… fucking repulsed by you, or whatever."

In the first place, that first kiss, Romano had – professedly – just been trying to make Spain jealous, and Wales had always assumed that he'd been chosen as an unwitting accomplice to that enterprise simply because he was quite clearly unattached, and France had been dangling him in front of every nation of his acquaintance in the dim hopes that one of them might care to take an experimental bite.

"So you were" – Wales picks his words carefully, speaks them cautiously, still expecting Romano to laugh at him for the presumption of them – "attracted to me? Even back then?"

Romano's blush deepens, and he tucks his chin in towards his shoulder, hiding more of his face from Wales' view. "Before that," he admits to the pillow beneath his head.

Before that, he and Wales had had a couple of awkward, stilted conversations when Wales hadn't been assiduous enough in his efforts to avoid running into Romano during the Six Nations, and an awkward, angry conversation in a French hospital after Wales accidentally broke Italy's nose. Far from auspicious events and unconducive, Wales would have thought, to cultivating in Romano anything other than the same prickly aversion that he had inspired within Wales.

"Jesus," he says again. "And here I thought you didn't even like me."

"I like you, _Galles_ ," Romano says, his grip on Wales' arm gentling, fingertips skimming soft over the thin skin on the underside of his wrist and the fine bones beneath.

"Well, you've got an amazing poker face, _De_ ," Wales says incredulously. "I never would have guessed."

Romano's scowl returns. "You made it pretty clear you couldn't stand me. Your brothers hated me. How else was I supposed to act?"

A defence mechanism, then. Wales maybe should have recognised it, as England acts just the same way: snappy, sullen, and unpleasant if he thinks people have taken against him, so they never suspect for a moment that it might bother or upset him in any way.

"I'm sorry," Wales says on reflex, though, truthfully, he's not sure that he would have reacted differently to Romano's behaviour, if he'd known any earlier what was causing it. His distance and disinterest in everything Wales did, said and was, was no less alienating or hurtful even if it was deliberate or feigned in some way.

Romano shrugs. "You still don't like me very much, though, do you?"

"I," Wales begins, but he can't in good conscience continue with a lie, but nor can he bring himself to tell the truth, not when Romano is, for the first time in their acquaintance, being open. Has made himself vulnerable.

His silence is answer enough on its own, though, and Romano releases his hold on Wales wrist, letting his hand fall to rest on the mattress, his fingers still curled in towards his palm. "We can still do this, if you want," he says quietly, gesturing between their two bodies with a brusque flick of his other hand. "Even though…"

Even though his feelings are far stronger than Wales would ever have imagined. Certainly, far stronger than Wales' are towards him.

He's always been the one in Romano's position before, if there was any imbalance of affections, and this is so far from the normal, expected script of Wales' life and relationships to date that he has no idea how to respond to it. What the best course of action should be.

"Maybe," he says, because he's got no better answer than that to give. "But… But not tonight. I'll need some time to think about it first."

To make a decision now that everything that he thought he'd understood has been turned upside down.

"Okay." Romano nods tightly. "Do you want me to go?"

He starts pushing himself up into a sitting position before Wales has chance to reply, but Wales places a hand on his shoulder, holds him steady.

"You stay here; I'll take the spare room," he says. "We can talk about it some more in the morning."

And he smiles, tries to sound reassuring, even though he very much doubts he will have even been able get his head around it all by then, never mind anything else.


End file.
